Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Group by Mary McCarthy

While this book follows the coming of age of a group of Vassar graduates mostly in New York City during the end of the Great Depression and into World War Two, it's really in some ways the story of one woman's unfortunate marriage and how that match affects the lives of her college friends. I read Joanna Smith Rakoff's A Fortunate Age a while ago for the Barnes and Noble First Look program, and at the time heard that she had written an homage to The Group--now I can see she straight up lifted the plot and set it forward sixty years. I enjoyed this book, although I think it would have been more striking if I were a contemporary and if I hadn't read the knock-off version first. Despite the large number of characters, I think McCarthy does a nice job of managing them so that the various scenes illuminate and fill in the inevitable gaps in the history far better than a more full chronology might.

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